


In November

by getoffmyhead



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Chicken People, M/M, Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:13:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmyhead/pseuds/getoffmyhead
Summary: Sid's egg always came in November.Most people brooded in April. It was a biological holdover from ancient times when they needed to keep the eggs warm without artificial assistance. Geno suspected Sid had manipulated his body—through pure stubbornness or medical intervention—to change his cycle so that it wouldn't interfere with the NHL playoffs. He wouldn't put it past Sid to make sure he would never miss a conference finals game to nurse himself through the annual process of ovulation.
Relationships: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Comments: 36
Kudos: 143





	In November

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Chicken Abortion

Sid's egg always came in November.

Most people brooded in April. It was a biological holdover from ancient times when they needed to keep the eggs warm without artificial assistance. Geno suspected Sid had manipulated his body—through pure stubbornness or medical intervention—to change his cycle so that it wouldn't interfere with the NHL playoffs. He wouldn't put it past Sid to make sure he would never miss a conference finals game to nurse himself through the annual process of ovulation.

The egg came on fast. Beginning to end, the whole process only took a little over a day. Sid would spend a morning grouchy and hungry, complaining that he couldn't skate lest he burst an egg inside himself—which team doctors _assured_ him would be very bad. And by lunchtime the next day, he was shakily recovering, his complaints turning to reassurances that he would be back on the ice by the next practice. The team had Sid's cycle down pat, like he was a race car. They would rush him in and out of doctors' offices and get him back in the lineup like he was never gone—a silky smooth process.

At least, when they were at home, things always went smoothly.

They were on the road in Dallas when Sid came down to breakfast with a crease of irritation on his forehead and stuffed two waffles into his face before he would talk to anyone. It was out of character, and there weren't many people left on the team who really knew what to expect. Sid had stopped sharing this part of himself a long time ago.

The newest batch of rookies and call-ups knew absolutely nothing about Sid's condition. They had never been on the roster in November. The oppressive fog of Sid's mood made them all dart scared looks down the table toward Geno, seeking guidance. Geno heartily ignored them in favor of savoring bites of mushroom omelet, concentrating on the salty, earthy taste to the exclusion of anything else.

Tanger moseyed into the dining room while Geno stared a hole in his plate to avoid questioning looks. Geno saw him slink in out of the corner of his eye. In a better mood, Geno might have yelled at him, teased him for taking too long straightening his hair. In the church-like hush, it felt like he might break something with his voice, so he stayed quiet and sent mental messages for Tanger to come sit with him. He needed someone to put a conversational shield between him and the scared rookies so nobody would get brave and try to talk to him.

In the periphery of Geno's vision, he watched Tanger grab a plate, take one look at Sid, and pick another table. It wasn't surprising. Tanger and Geno were the only two left who remembered, who _really_ knew. Tanger had been snapped at and pushed away enough times to give up on interacting with Sid when he was broody years ago. Geno silently cursed him even as he eyed up whether he could slink over to join Tanger at the other table without anybody taking it as an opportunity to engage him.

In his efforts to avoid rookie eye contact and size up the gap between tables, Geno missed Jake's trajectory toward Sid. He didn't notice until Jake crashed in across from Sid with a heaping plate of seconds and said, "Is coffee a good idea for you right now?"

Geno's head snapped around like he was possessed. His hand clenched around his fork, instinctively wishing to lob it three chairs down and hit Jake in the head. He was one of the dangerous ones who had been around long enough to know what was happening but not long enough to know better. They were always the wildcards, the ones most likely to upset the delicate balance.

Sid's eyes came up slowly to set on Jake. When he smiled, Geno could see the strain it took. "It's not going to hurt anything, bud. Don't worry about it."

"I just thought," Jake said while he buttered his bagel with an intent and earnest look. Geno wanted to tell him he shouldn't think—he should stick to his more natural talents. "Doesn't caffeine hurt the egg? Or is that just humans?"

"I don't know anything about human eggs," Sid said, actual amusement starting to crinkle his eyes.

"But, it's the same thing," Jake pressed before he ripped a piece of bagel off and popped it in his mouth. "You're like—pregnant, right?"

Geno stood up so fast it caught not only Jake's attention. All eyes turned to him—almost. Sid was suddenly intensely and singularly interested in the table. He poked once at his last remaining waffle, jaw clenched so hard Geno could practically hear his teeth grinding. "Excuse me."

The rest of the team averted their curious gazes when Sid levered himself up, ashamed of their nosiness. Geno did the opposite, watching Sid's back retreat. Sid's walk looked uncomfortable, like he'd pulled his groin in a game, and it twinged with every step.

Sid was almost to the door when Geno caught Tanger's eyes on him, glaring. Tanger jerked his head toward Sid and made a frustrated motion with his hand. _Do something._

Well, at least Geno had that much. After twelve years, Tanger thought Geno could be trusted to speak to Sid in this state without attacking him. It was something, even if most of the team management wouldn't agree. They would prefer to keep Sid and Geno entirely separate.

Geno moved before he could second guess himself, before he could consider what people might think. He grabbed two boxes of cereal and small cartons of milk on his way out of the dining room.

He caught up with Sid right as he reached his room and held cereal out like a shield when Sid spun around on him. "You seem hungry. Need carbs, right?"

Sid stared at him with a hard, unreadable expression. "I shouldn't. That stuff is garbage."

"Waffles is also," Geno said and then grimaced. It was supposed to sound more like solidarity than chastisement, permission for Sid to eat whatever he wanted while he grew an egg the size of a football and prepared to shove it out of his body.

"Watching what I eat?" Sid's tone had a bite to it, a big _back off_ sign flashing neon between them. It was exactly why Geno usually didn't approach Sid when he brooded—or anytime in November. He spent December tip-toeing around, making longer excursions into Sid's space. By January, they were usually okay again.

"No, I—" Geno cut himself off from lying any further. He obviously was watching Sid.

"You're worse than Jake," Sid said. His stone face softened. He scratched at his arm while his eyes darted to the cereal. "It's a lot of sugar." Geno read it for what it was—another chance, one he absolutely did not deserve.

"I can put down and leave. Nobody ever know," Geno said, heart pounding with hope that Sid would give him even a sliver of an opening during this very sensitive time. "You eat with milk. Good for shell, hmm?"

That was a bridge too far. Sid's softening expression shuttered. "Jesus Christ, what's with you guys today? It's not like it matters if the shell is good."

"Sid—"

"Just—fine. I'll take it. Thanks."

Geno pulled his feet from the ground one heavy step at a time until he was standing in Sid's space. He tried not to breathe in while he handed the cereal over, but he still caught a whiff. It would be nice to pretend it didn't affect him the way it did when he was young, but that's all it would be—pretend. Sid smelled _ripe_ , and not in a bad way. He smelled positively edible, like the best thing in the world—still.

"G?" Sid asked. Only when his voice broke the spell did Geno realize he wasn't moving back. His hands were still on the cereal boxes and milk, halfway through the act of handing them over.

"Sorry," Geno said quickly, completing the breakfast transaction and backing way off. He didn't entirely get away with it, though. He saw how Sid's eyes traveled down and stopped over the thin fabric covering his groin. Geno didn't dare look also to see how bad it was, how much he was showing. "I'm sorry, I—"

"Thanks," Sid said, dragging his eyes up. He raised the little stash of breakfast without smiling. "It should hold me over for a few hours."

Geno nodded. "You want I bring you fried pie?"

If it were any other day in any other month, it would be a silly comment to get a rise out of Sid. Fried pies were barely even _food_. The locker room had been introduced to the Texas staple by Big Rig when he was around. They were like huge fruit-filled and deep-fried pierogis. Sid would never voluntarily put one inside his body.

Here, in a hotel in Dallas, preparing to make a desperate nest for himself out of whatever familiarity he could find inside his room, Sid didn't laugh or balk. He shrugged. "I don't know, maybe. I'm starving."

If there was one thing to be said for the years Geno wasn't allowed to get this close to Sid when he brooded, it was that at least he didn't have to see Sid looking so pitiful. It brought up instincts he couldn't afford to have, tender wants that crashed against his baser desires and brewed into a roiling storm of emotion.

"I bring brisket," Geno said. "You like last time. From that place. Spring something. I find again and bring."

Sid had his hand on the doorknob, but he leveled a very long look at Geno and then nodded. "Extra rolls."

"Sure, Sid. Extra rolls."

*****

Everybody fucks up when they're young.

Geno repeated the phrase to himself every November, a mantra when old humiliation came back to race around in his brain like an anxiety attack. Normally, he could run away, get into his car, and drive fast through the city. It was one of the many reasons he was grateful that Sid's egg almost always came at home. In Pittsburgh, Geno could carve out space to quietly freak out.

It was harder surrounded by teammates, thirty people on a bus lumbering across Dallas to get some ice time. Geno kept his breathing consciously slow and mentally repeated the mantra. _Everybody fucks up when they're young._

Sid and Geno spoke maybe five common words the first time they came together. It was right after the first time they skated. Sid had looked so _thrilled_ coming off the ice, more alive than anyone Geno had ever known. He beamed at Geno, spoke fast while smiling, and some of the homesickness eating away at Geno's gut eased.

If Sid had never offered, never leered at Geno while yapping away in the round vowels of Canadian English, maybe it never would have gotten so far. Geno didn't think he would have had the courage on his own. If Sid had never reached for his hand after that first skate and jerked his head toward an empty room. If he hadn't smiled.

They were _young_. It was hard to remember that, sometimes. Geno was barely out of his teens. He deserved forgiveness for what he did.

Sid was even younger.

Geno breathed through the pain of that thought. He put his head against the window, staring out at the buildings rolling by. The glass was unnaturally hot, like Dallas didn't actually have a winter. There were just a few months a year when the sun stopped actively trying to kill people. He told himself it was the heat that made him feel feverish and sick, but he was never a very good liar.

Knowing Sid for twelve years was very different from knowing him for twelve days. If Geno could have somehow known about Sid, his earnestness, his—not just unwillingness, but _inability_ to deceive.

But Geno didn't know. He only knew that this hot guy wanted to suck his dick furtively after practice. He knew Sid would get too loud if Geno licked his nipples—but that Sid _definitely_ wanted more of that because he started shuffling Geno into his car after practice instead of into a locked room.

In his memory, it seemed like they only did it a handful of times, but Geno knew he was minimizing. They must have been at it for—well. From training camp in September to sometime in November. He knew it ended in November.

Sid had started smelling _good_. He smelled so good Geno got really blatant about shoving him into dark corners and crowding up against his neck while he relieved the aching in his dick by pressing it against Sid's tree-trunk thigh. People must have known, figured it out, but Geno was dizzy, totally lost in Sid's smell and the things he allowed Geno to do to him.

Like fucking him. Geno found _that_ out when Sid, pink and nervous in his bed at Mario fucking Lemieux's house, spread his legs and let Geno crawl between them.

Geno knew before then that he and Sid were the same. In Russia, they called him chelovek kuritsa—chicken person. It was an insult, but there were no complimentary names for his kind in Russian. Geno didn't know back then what Canada called them. He didn't even realize his people existed in North America before he started sleeping with Sid.

Young as he might have been at the time, Geno was no virgin. But he had never been inside one of his own species before. He felt lost in it, happily drowning in Sid's scent and the warmth of his body and his noises—Sid was so noisy that time, the one time they did it like that. He clung to Geno, holding on tight to his shoulders while he practically sobbed against his mouth. It was a level of vulnerability Geno hadn't seen from Sid before.

He hadn't seen it since, either, but that was his own fault. He couldn't cry over the situation he created.

Well. Nobody had to _know_ if he cried over it.

Geno shook himself out of his thoughts when the bus pulled up to the practice rink in Frisco. His body felt stuck to the seat, melted there by heat and misery. He dragged himself up with every fatigued muscle he could spare and spent all of his energy getting off the bus.

Sully wasn't around during Geno's rookie year, but he clearly knew something about it. He knew enough to lay off Geno when he knew Sid's egg was coming. Sully didn't yell at Geno for his faults on the ice—and there were many. He even offered a bare little smile after Geno fucked up a passing drill and sent the puck sailing well behind his partner.

"Everybody has bad days, buddy. Relax," Sully said, which was pretty much the opposite of his normal attitude of _everybody has bad days, get the fuck over yourself_.

Geno's mind stayed half on Sid back in the hotel, wondering what he was doing for a nest. He imagined Sid calling down to the lobby for more bedding, lots of pillows. Geno should have taken him those things. He could have sent one of the kids up to deliver them, since Sid didn't want Geno anywhere near him when he nested.

Except. Sid had agreed to let Geno bring him lunch.

Geno skipped the bus back to the hotel in favor of calling an Uber. Sid had conceded to let Geno take care of him, if only in the smallest way possible, and Geno was going to make that happen. Sid wanted lunch—Geno would get him lunch.

The name of the restaurant was Spring Creek. It was a low-class barbecue establishment Geno had a hard time not describing as a cowboy restaurant. But Seguin had recommended it with puppyish enthusiasm to Sid, and that was how the team had ended up there for lunch last time they were in Dallas.

Geno slunk his way inside, thinking it would be like Pittsburgh, that he would have to talk to people—so many people—about hockey. Instead, the blue-jeans-wearing crowd merely glanced at him. They seemed surprised only by his height and his accent. Their gazes held no recognition at all. On another, less distracted day, he might be insulted.

Geno bought enough brisket for the entire team, a dozen rolls, and what felt like six pounds of peach cobbler, then sat in the back of an Uber in traffic with his heel tapping against the floor all the way back to the hotel.

It took almost a minute for Sid to get the door open after Geno's ginger rapping. He was starting to look pretty bad. Creating the egg took so much of his body's resources, he would come out the other side like he was emerging from the flu. His lips were chapped and crinkly—Geno could see when he grimaced a smile.

Geno didn't know a lot about egg production, but he knew one thing—healthy laying required hydration. One of the most dangerous things Sid could do while brooding was to let himself get dehydrated. Geno spoke before he could stop himself.

"You need me to get drink? Sprite?"

Sid shook his head and retreated into the dark, warm room. "I'm okay. If you just leave it, I'll eat in a minute."

Sid didn't look okay. He looked a lot more drawn than he did the last time Geno saw him brooding. Granted, that was twelve years ago, so maybe the memory had faded, but Sid looked gaunt. Almost—frail. Not a word Geno would generally use to describe Sid.

Geno caught the door with his foot before it could close. "Sid...can I help?"

Sid snorted bitterly from within the room, but Geno thought maybe he wasn't supposed to hear it. Sid answered genially. "You did help. You're feeding me. Thank you."

Geno stared down at the threshold for a few beats before he crossed it. Sid would hate him for this, probably, intruding where he didn't belong, where he was most unwelcome. But people _died_ from dehydration when they were broody. The egg could stop in the oviduct and cause all kinds of issues. At the very least, Geno needed to get Sid something to drink.

Sid had turned the heat in the room up as high as it would go. When the door closed, it was a dry sauna. Geno placed the food on the table and went to the fridge without looking toward the bed. He could feel Sid's eyes on him—watching him suspiciously, no doubt.

Geno finally let himself look at the bed when he turned around with two water bottles. It wasn't as nest-like as what Sid had created twelve years ago, but he had been home then. This was basically just a pile of pillows and blankets. Sid sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed with a pillow in his arms, watching Geno approach him with an unreadable expression. When Geno held out a bottle, Sid's interior eyelid flickered closed, like he was flinching from a hit. Then he slowly reached up and took the bottle, eyes scanning over Geno's face again while he did.

"I'm sorry," Geno said—it just slipped out. He usually tried to avoid the phrase for fear that it was all he would ever say to Sid again. Saying it now made him feel close to tears, a shotgun blast of emotion to his chest.

Thank god, Sid didn't force him to elaborate. He just swallowed dryly and said unconvincingly, "I'm okay, G. I'll be okay."

"You want I can rent car, healthy scratch for game, drive you back to Pittsburgh overnight? You nest there."

Sid huffed a laugh and shook his head. "Nah, here's fine." He finally opened the water. Once he started gulping it back, he couldn't seem to stop until it was drained. Instead of backing off, Geno held out the other bottle. Sid took it with a less fake-looking smile.

"You want eat now?" Geno asked.

Sid studied him with a cocked head and nodded. He stayed put and let Geno go over to the food and prepare him a plate. Geno stopped for a third water bottle on his way back to Sid and handed everything over.

It both filled and broke something inside Geno to be doing this. There was no pretending that it was a simple transaction between them—Geno looking out for a teammate, a friend. This could never be simple for them.

The first time Geno saw Sid's nest, he hadn't done this for him. He had simply been annoyed that they couldn't fuck. But he also couldn't _say_ that in English, so he had resigned himself to sit in the nest with Sid and play Halo all afternoon in the circle of blankets and clothes. In the brightly lit past of his memory, it was nice. Sid was happy to be broody back then, almost like he enjoyed it.

The darkness and quiet misery in the hotel room provided a harsh contrast. Geno felt like he should go.

"You eating or just staring?" Sid asked, the most shocking of invitations.

Geno shouldn't be eating barbecue before games. But Sid had invited him. And honestly, it wasn't like he would have a career night, not if practice served as a preview. Geno caved and got a plate for himself. He didn't approach the bed—that was no longer for him. He was lucky Sid let him stay in the room at all. He took the chair away from the desk and pulled it around to face the TV, then held up the remote, questioning. Sid shrugged.

"Sure, whatever you want."

Geno flipped channels until he found an old Western with cowboy sheriffs chasing outlaws—Texas really was a different planet—then settled in to eat brisket until he could bully Sid into another bottle of water.

Sid shifted around a lot on the bed, making uncomfortable little sounds until Geno asked, "You okay? Hurt?"

Sid's response was scathing. "I'm growing a watermelon next to my liver, G. Yeah. It hurts."

"Can you take Tylenol? Aleve? I can get."

"I already took a shit ton of Tylenol."

"That's okay for egg?"

Sid slumped and turned an exhausted look on him. "I told you—"

"It don't matter, yes. I know. I'm—" Geno nearly said sorry again but cut himself off.

Sid said it for him. "Sorry. This isn't my best side, eh?"

Geno shrugged. He could say so many things. He deserved Sid's irritation. He deserved so much _more_. He was happy Sid let him in, even if he snapped. "It's okay."

"Maybe I should just get some sleep. Try to."

"That's good idea," Geno said, rising. "You call if you need, okay? Have phone?"

"Yeah, I've got it. Good luck tonight."

Geno didn't think all the luck in the world would help him against the Stars, but he held the sentiment on his tongue as he left, parting from Sid with a sympathetic smile. 

*****

As predicted, Geno played like garbage. Somehow, the Penguins still won. Geno gratefully rode the high of everyone's cheer after the narrow victory to get him back to the hotel in one piece, where the weight of everything would crash into him again. 

Geno hovered outside Sid's door for a while, thinking about knocking, before he bowed away and went to bed. Sid was nice to him that afternoon. That didn't mean he deserved it.

Geno was not at all surprised that he couldn't sleep that night. His mind was with Sid in his room, groaning with his hands on his swelling stomach while he grew a hollow imitation of life inside him.

Sid would lay the egg sometime in mid-morning. If the team had to leave without him, that would be okay. They would charter him back to Pittsburgh after he recovered enough. The egg itself—that would go in the trash. Sid always discarded his eggs. He wanted nothing to do with them once they were out of his body.

Well. He always discarded his eggs _now_. After the first time, back in Geno's rookie season.

Geno closed his eyes hard against a tidal wave of shame. The memory of Sid's rosy cheeks and bright smile when he brought his egg to the locker room would never not haunt Geno.

Sid had laid his egg overnight after Geno went home. Sid didn't have a camera phone back then, so he borrowed one from one of Mario's kids to send Geno a picture of it in his nest.

The shell had been olive green and textured. It looked clean, like Sid had tidied it up some after laying. Geno wasn't sure he liked the feeling it stirred in him, seeing that egg. He didn't respond, just tucked his phone away and continued about his morning.

He liked it considerably less when Sid showed up with it at practice, neatly swaddled in blankets and nestled in a milk crate.

Bursts of excitable French became the ambiance of the locker room as Sid's tiny army of Quebecois surrounded him to see. Even if they spoke any English, Geno couldn't know it back then. He was still struggling to learn the word for bathroom and count to ten.

Sid beamed at Geno through the shoulders of his peers. In Geno's memory, he looked so shiny and fresh—too much of a baby himself to be preening over an egg.

Geno didn't really put all the connections together about why he felt weird looking at the egg and why Sid kept grinning at him about it for another few days. Sid had handed the egg off to Dana for practices and games, trusting him to keep it warm in Sid's absence. Dana did it with a patronizing smile for a while. Broody people would come to their senses, eventually, let the logical side of them take over and discard the unfertilized egg. They only kept and cared for the ones with life in them, the ones that would hatch.

Dana's smile grew more strained by the day.

On the fifth day, Seryozha met Geno at the locker room doors before practice looking mutely horrified. "Come."

Geno followed him into the GM's office, where, through painful translation, Geno learned what was going on.

"You and Sid are having a baby."

"What?" Geno cried. "What are you talking about? No, we're not."

Seryozha sighed at him. "The egg. The one he's been carrying around like a purse—Zhenya, did you really think nobody would notice?"

Geno felt it then, the gut-churning feeling he got as a child standing on a frozen lake when he heard the crack underneath his feet. Sid's egg. Sid had smelled so _good_. Sid had practically begged Geno to fuck him, which Geno had done _bare_.

Seryozha saw it dawn in his eyes. "There we go. Sex education just isn't up to par in Magnitka, is it?"

"They think just because I'm the same as him, I'm automatically the one who knocked him up?" Geno asked—a fox in a trap starting to gnaw his own leg.

"Judging by your face, they wouldn't be wrong to assume—"

"That would be none of their business," Geno snapped.

“Sid _made_ it their business, son.”

"What?"

"Sid came marching in here, told them you two were having a kid together. He wanted them to have time to get ahead of things, for the press—"

" _Press?_ ” Geno cried. This was his life going down in flames. They were going to tell everyone he was having a baby with his team captain? The guy he was only fucking, who he couldn't even talk to. He would never live this down.

Oh god, Oksana, he thought with his hands clenched in his hair while he sucked in breaths. They weren’t _dating_ , per se, but they were something. She would never want to touch him again.

In bed in Dallas twelve years later, Geno cringed at his boyhood idiocy. To think of how much he threw away for a pretty, skinny girl who wasn't even nice to him.

Back in the office surrounded by severe-looking strangers, Geno had blown up. He didn't remember what he said, only that he said it so fast Seryozha couldn't translate more than the gist—a threat to go back to Russia and stay there. At one point, Geno even had his agent on the phone.

The clear memories cut back in later when he saw Sid again the next morning. Sid didn't have the egg with him anymore. His eyes had looked so red. That was the first time guilt cut through the anger, and Geno thought about how Sid was feeling instead of focusing on his own self-preservation. He had watched Sid move in slow motion, wiping at his eyes, snapping at anyone who pried too much. Geno didn't need to know the words to see that Sid was heartbroken.

The full breadth of Geno's callousness caught up with him when Sid looked at him. His glare held weight, like a punch, accusing. Blaming. Sid had gotten rid of the egg because Geno wouldn't have a baby with him.

It would have been stupid, of course—two babies having a baby—but broody people didn't think that way. It did something to their minds, clouded their thoughts. Broody people sometimes did rash things, like plan a new life with their fuck buddy who they've never really spoken to. Sid's fuck up was entirely understandable. Geno's was not.

Geno had spent every November for twelve years feeling terrible about what he did. And now, here he was, at half-past two in the morning in Dallas, having a breakdown about it.

But Sid had let Geno care for him. He had allowed Geno to bring him lunch, feed him, give him water. Stay with him. Maybe everything wasn't lost. Maybe it wasn't too late.

Geno gathered all the blankets off his bed and wadded them haphazardly around him, then went out the door and down the hall. He knocked on Sid's door. Sid answered even slower than last time, all hunched over like his body was too heavy to haul around.

"Geno?"

"Sid, I—" He didn't even know what to say. Maybe he hadn't even thought Sid would answer. "I bring blanket. For nest."

Sid's eyes roamed over Geno. He stepped back without a word and shuffled into the room after Geno. Sid leaned on the office chair to watch Geno pile the blankets with those already nestled on the bed. When Geno was done, Sid returned to his nest and huddled into the new blankets. Geno went for water from the fridge and knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed.

"Sid," he said softly, reaching out to stroke Sid's cheek. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I was awake."

"No. I don't mean—I never say before. Years. I know I should, but. I'm sorry."

Sid's affable smile fell away, dragged down by the weight of Geno's words. "You're not used to being around me like this, huh? Brings up old stuff."

Geno didn't really think that was right. It brought up old _memories_ , sure, but the other stuff, the desire to wrap Sid up in a mountain of soft blankets and hand feed him until he felt better—twenty-year-old Geno would have been horrified.

"It's okay, G. We got through it."

Geno didn't think that was entirely true, either.

"Besides, you were right."

"No, Sid. I'm not right, then. I'm scared."

"Then you were right to be scared," Sid said with a sad ghost of a smile. "It wasn't your fault."

"I do very bad. I yell. You want baby and I—"

"Shh," Sid said. The words seemed to hurt him more than anything else. His eyes were tightly shut. "It was for the best."

"You don't have lie."

"I'm not. Geno, it _was_ for the best. I didn't want a baby. I still don't. And you didn't want me."

Sid's voice stayed steady, almost convincing, until the last part. Then it shook. Geno shuffled around to kneel with his arms on the foot of the bed, close enough to whisper his confession.

"I want you."

"That's horse shit, bud," Sid said, averting his eyes from Geno's. "You didn't want anything to do with me."

"Because I don't know you before, but—now I know you, and I wish. I wish things are different. If we never have egg, you know? If we don't stop. I think—I'm stupid then, but I will learn about you. I will love you."

Geno's words ran out before he could coax the doubtful look off of Sid's face. In desperation, he huddled in close and dropped a kiss onto Sid's chapped lips, breaking down a barrier he could never truly repair again.

"I love you _now_ ," Geno said even though his throat tried to constrict around the words.

Sid said nothing. Geno closed his eyes as though he could ward off the pain Sid's rejection would cause him. When the silence continued, stretching across the endless seconds, Geno beat a retreat. He was being unfair, springing his feelings on Sid when he was already deep into a brood. He should pull back, pack his unwanted feelings away, and hope that there was something to salvage between them in the morning.

Only, as he pulled back, Geno met resistance. He froze, realizing that Sid's hand was clutched in his shirt. Sid was looking at him with a wide-eyed and open expression.

"Geno," Sid said, seeming to grasp even for that much to say. Instead of speaking again, he tugged on Geno's shirt to pull him close and kiss him again.

*****

The egg was green, though maybe a little lighter than the last one Geno saw. Geno wasn't sure. He couldn't clearly remember that far back. He had certainly never touched it back then, run his hands over the slight imperfections in the shell, felt the indents and pockmarks spanning the surface.

"It's not viable," Sid said. His tone was gentle, as though he thought Geno might not understand.

"I know," Geno assured him, but he kept the egg between his hands, cradled like a baby.

Sid cleared his throat. "It's, uh—actually hard to fight the instincts. I get rid of them pretty quick, usually."

The message was clear—Geno needed to get the egg away from Sid so he could get his hormones under control. Geno nodded without tearing his eyes from the smooth, green shell.

"Uh oh. _You're_ not getting the baby buzz, are you?" Sid said it with a teasing lilt to his tone, but Geno couldn't deny his reluctance. The instinct should only affect the one laying the egg, but he truly didn't want to put the egg down. He wondered if it was some kind of phantom broodiness.

"No, I'm okay," Geno said through his teeth, but he still didn't get up. "You mean what you say? You don't want?"

"The egg? G, there's nothing in it. You could fry it up, eat it for breakfast. It's nothing."

The weight in Geno's hands didn't feel like nothing. He swallowed, casting around in his mind for something to say. Sid wanted to brighten the dark mood of the room, joke around, but Geno didn't feel very funny.

"You meant a kid," Sid said without prompting, sounding solemn.

Geno nodded. "I know not this egg, but—you don't want baby ever?"

"No," Sid said firmly. Geno imagined he needed to be firm, to remind himself and his hormonal body that it wasn't going to happen. "I like kids and all, but it's—not for me."

Geno ripped his eyes away from the egg to look at Sid, nestled in a pile of pillows as he recovered from laying. Sid shrugged sheepishly at his skeptical stare.

"Yes, I know how it looks. I get broody as hell. Doesn't mean I want one. At least—not while I'm still playing."

"But after. If we—"

Sid laughed. "Let's go on a date first, see if _we're_ even going to work before we start talking about babies."

"We work," Geno said with a dismissive sniff. He didn't think Sid harbored any real doubt about it, either.

"I hope so," Sid said, sounding incredibly fond. "Now, would you please get that thing out of here? At this point, I'm more worried about you keeping it than me."

Geno held the warm egg in the nest of his hands. He let himself imagine cradling the egg out to the bus, keeping it in a crate swaddled in blankets, handing it off to Dana to care for during games until the life inside was ready. Then he levered himself up to take care of discarding the egg before either of their instincts could take over entirely.


End file.
